Hockey is a physical sport, so many injuries are unavoidable. But the Wild will spend part of the offseason trying to analyze why it has been so prone to injury the past couple of seasons.
"[Athletic therapist] Don Fuller will put together a report on the injuries, how the injury occurred, the treatment prescribed and how quickly the player came back to play, and just look for any pattern that we can find that would lead us to maybe do something different going forward," General Manager Chuck Fletcher said. "At first blush, looking at the injury list -- you see a lot of shoulder injuries and head injuries and injuries that happen from a high-impact collision or violent collision. I am just not sure how you avoid that.
"If we had a lot of soft-tissue type of injuries -- a lot of groins or a lot of lower back injuries or a lot of hip flexors or those types of injuries, then maybe we would have to look at the conditioning level of our club or how we train or practice."
Fletcher noted that "a lot of our injuries seem to come after a period of time where we have a whole bunch of road games on the West Coast and we're bouncing around, so maybe fatigue had something to do with it, but I'm just guessing."
The Wild didn't play its first road game in the Central time zone until Dec. 13 at Winnipeg. That came after the Wild's second West Coast swing and in a 24-hour stretch when the Wild lost three players.
Fletcher said he hopes when the Wild eventually moves into a more geographically sensible division (realignment, for now, will be delayed) that it would "take a lot of the wear and tear off our team."
Heatley's productionDany Heatley's 24 goals were the fewest of his career in a full season, but Fletcher said Heatley was "outstanding."
"I would make that trade again tomorrow," Fletcher said in acquiring Heatley for Martin Havlat. "When I look at him and the minutes he has played and the matchups he has had to play against, and the fact he has scored over 20 goals and is a plus player in light of the injuries and lack of production we have had from our blue line, I think it's been a tremendous season for him.